lover of the black rose; unfettered and alive; chief archivist of the western slopes; another of Yemaya's babes in the world; Joachim's distant star; boring stories of - glory daze

Thursday, November 22, 2007

sendin' me excitations...

At poemhunters.com., the "Top" "500" "poets": Neruda at 1, "Shel Silverstein" at 5, Herbert Nehrlich (you remember Herb, with his 2734 poems in the databank) at 202, just before hometown girl Naomi Shihab Nye. Henry and his puppeteer are AWOL, nowhere to be found. Henry & JB send this one in, anyway, for your consideration.

Dream Song 123: Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north

Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north,I have nothing to say except that it dapples my floorand it would dapple meif I lay on that floor, as-well-forthwithI have done, trying well to mount a thoughtnot carelessly

in times forgotten, except by the New York Timeswhich can't forget. There is always the morgue.There are men in the morgue.These men have access. Sleepless, in position,they dream the past foreverColossal in the dawn comes the second light

we do all die, in the floor, in the morgueand we must die forever, c'est la morta heady brilliancethe ultimate gloirepost-mach, probably in underwearas we met each other once.

This, for lagniappe; I don't think A. R. made the the Top 500 cut either. Must needs have room for Wilson, Brian and McKuen, Rod. Let this one hit you anyway, hymn of hymns:

The City Limitsby A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withholditself but pours its abundance without selection into everynook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light butlie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you considerthe radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you considerthe abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumpedguts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in noway winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,each is accepted into as much light as it will take, thenthe heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the darkwork of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushesand fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

I first found the Ammons poem about 10 years ago, when - I was going to say, when I first started writing poetry "in earnest," but I think it would be more accurate to say, when I first stopped writing poetry in earnest, and just started writing. I went through a bout of memorizing poems, and this was the first. I love the unholy holiness of it.